The beginning of the 1970’s brought emerging social movements. The largest of these was the Women’s Liberation Movement which fought for equal pay, better education, birth control and abortion rights for women. The 1973 Supreme Court decision in Roe vs. Wade, legalized abortion., allowing women more options for dealing with unwanted pregnancies. Divorce laws were amended in many states, allowing women the ability to seek divorces and obtain spousal support. Women joined the workforce in huge numbers and outnumbered men on college campuses.
Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique.
“Just what was the problem that has no name? What were the words women used when they tried to express it? Sometimes a woman would say “I feel empty somehow . . . incomplete.” Or she would say, “I feel as if I don’t exist.” Sometimes…. “A tired feeling … I get so angry with the children it scares me. … I feel like crying without any reason.”
The quote shows that women were not satisfied with their role in society anymore and wanted more in life. Women had a new life plan including not viewing housework as a career; not trying to find total fulfillment through marriage and motherhood alone; and finding meaningful work that uses the woman’s full mental capacity. Betty Friedman was among the women who took a step to bring about these changes to society. She wanted to give women the right to do anything they desired. She spoke for the whole female population and influenced them to change, therefore Howard Zinn included her in his writings.
American Indian Movement
The most surprising uprising of the 1970’s was the American Indian Movement(AIM). At the turn of the 20th century, American Indians organized in large numbers in the 70’s to address the wrongs done to them since the time of Columbus. In dramatic fashion, members of AIM occupied the former island prison of Alcatraz in 1969 to draw attention to their grievances against the American government.
Chief Luther Standing Bear, in his 1933 autobiography, From the Land of the Spotted Eagle, wrote:
True, the white man brought great change. But the varied fruits of his civilization, though highly colored and inviting, are sickening and deadening. And if it be the part of civilization to maim, rob, and thwart, then what is progress?I am going to venture that the man who sat on the ground in his tipi meditating on life and its meaning, accepting- the kinship of all creatures, and acknowledging unity with the universe of things, was infusing into his being the true essence of civilization… .
For many Americans in the early twentieth century, the problems of Native Americans too often seemed distant. Luther Standing Bear was an advocate for reform in the United States government’s often neglectful policies toward Native Americans. Much of his writing addresses the inequities and injustices of a system that consigned Indians to life on reservations without adequate schools, housing, or medicine. A year after the publication of The Land of the Spotted Eagle, Congress passed the Indian Reorganization Act (1934), legislation designed to return to Native Americans control of reservation resources, reduce disproportionately high unemployment rates, and restore the administrative authority of individual tribes. Thus, Howard Zinn included him in his writings.
